The Great Bee Adventure of 2011

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Other Stories

John and Deb Bruihler came to the ELIKYA Center all the way from their home town of Rushford, Minnesota. Leaving their farm under two feet of snow, they escaped the Midwestern cold for the blazing heat of central Africa. In addition to their farming operation they keep bees and sell honey. It was precisely this aspect of their work that brought them to Congo in the first place. Honey has a relatively high market value but nobody in this area keeps bees. To get honey they must go into the zamba (jungle) and look for a wild hive, then extract the honey at night and bring it all the way back to town and try to sell it. So there is a lot of unexplored economic potential in beekeeping. John and Deb agreed to come to ELIKYA for 5 weeks to help explore that.

Undeterred by their strenuous journey to ELIKYA that involved sleeping in the Nairobi airport overnight and spending two days on the road as we travelled from Zongo to Gemena, they got right to work upon arrival. The priority for the first week was constructing a hive.

Building the Hive

Once the hive was built the challenge was to get bees to populate it. A neighbor of ours at ELIKYA, named Victor turned out to be a honey hunter and he was glad to oblige. He brought back some comb and some bees. We tied up the comb in the new house in hopes that the bees would care for the brood. The number of bees we had to start with, however, was too low to really start a new colony and they either died from the transport in a sack, the cold (believe it or not) or absconded back from whence they came. So we were unable to get a hive going but a lot of people got some good experience in seeing how a colony can be started and how to use the smoker and attach comb to the top bars.

Taking the hive out

Gathering 'round the hive

John with a bag-o-bees

John and Jean working the bees

The next three weeks were spent teaching a class of approximately 25 the basics of beekeeping. Our students included Jonathon, slated to teach future classes at ELIKYA the exact same course that John just taught. As a student destined to become the teacher, he was an effusive note-taker. Jean, the CECU Director of Development in the Zongo region, was also part of the class. Jean was involved in a prior attempt at beekeeping that never took off so he was very excited to be a part of the class. The rest of the students were ELIKYA’s very own widows and orphans. They proved to be very excited about the class.

John and Jean

Morning Bee Class

John taught the class every morning and I translated. This turned out to be an excellent opportunity to work on my Lingala and get creative explaining certain things. Like how do you explain supercedure in Lingala? I hardly knew what it meant in English. It was certainly a challenge when explaining something rather technical and involved, to have to do so in a language as limited as Lingala. Nevertheless, the students really picked up on it and got involved, especially when it turned hands-on and practical.

Students got to try their hand at rendering wax...

Bee Practicum

Squeezing out wax

Candle in a tin can

Papaya stem candle

and at pouring wax starter strips to encourage the bees to build on each top bar.

Making wax starter strips

But the best lesson by far came from the bees themselves. One thing John had been disappointed with during his first week here was the seeming absence of bees in the area. A bowl of water and honey that we had set out had failed to attract even a single bee. Getting enough bees and comb from local honey hunters was also not working out. It looked like we were simply going to have to accept the fact that bees were not going to be a part of the beekeeping class. But they had other ideas.

One afternoon we were returning to ELIKYA having just finished a tractor class at the CECU garage when we got a call from Sarah, who had stayed home. She said that a “humungous” swarm of bees had just flown over ELIKYA. They had apparently occupied a mbila (palm) tree in the middle of the Center for a short while so we were to avoid that since Deb has a serious bee allergy. Once we had walked back, John inspected the mbila and, lo and behold, the entire swarm of bees was still there! John had been teaching in class that very week how the best way to begin a new hive is to catch a swarm. From others we had talked to, it seemed that the swarm season was around July-August. So we were not expecting this! And of all the places to settle they had chosen a tree smack dab in the middle of the ELIKYA Center.

Wasting no time, John went to get his bee suit and the smoker. I grabbed a ladder and a large burlap-type sack and we all met back at the mbila. By now many of the orphans had been called and were running over to watch the crazy white man catch a sack of bees. Once we were pumping out smoke John climbed the ladder to gather the bees. Earlier in class, he had convincingly told them that bees when they are in a swarm like this are much more docile. Nobody was willing to put that to the test. A couple kids were holding the branch down to make it easier for him to work but other than that everyone kept their distance. Eventually, the bulk of the bees were in the bag.

Keeping their distance

Helping John with the smoker

Easy does it...

Walking the bees out to the hive

John tied up the bag and we started to walk out to where we had placed the hive three days earlier. By this time just about all of the orphans that were in the class were following along. The place where we had set the hive was a ten minute walk. It was in a shady spot near the river. We got there just as darkness was falling and…no hive. It was gone; vanished. We were all absolutely stricken by the theft. Moving the hive was no small feat. It was pretty big and extremely heavy. Many of the orphans were both upset and angry that someone would steal something that was being used to help people. There was nothing we could do so we walked back to ELIKYA and a couple of us prayed over the situation, asking God to return the hive and to receive glory in the resolution of the situation.

The next day John made an attempt at making a small hive out of a plastic bucket in the hopes of hiving the straggler bees that were left on the mbila and the sack we had left by the river. We gave it a shot but it was too small and the bees didn’t take to it. A lot of the bees were flying around stinging people. We made a few rounds with the smoker, “rescuing “victims from their winged oppressors. Then I handed it off and went inside.

Pouring bees into a bucket

So at the end of it we had received the amazing and unexpected gift of a swarm of bees and then had to face the reality that we had nowhere to put them. It was tough to take. All in all, though, it was still a very valuable experience for the students in the class to see a swarm of bees and to see how to catch it. They were part of a big event here at ELIKYA and they were right in the middle of it. It was encouraging to listen to them as they described what the bees were doing and reciting things they had learned in class earlier in the week. I think it stoked their desire to try this for themselves. And ultimately, hive or no hive, everybody knew that God had sent the bees for the training. I’d say we put them to good use.

One of the best aspects of the class was the way that it got the students thinking. Like any business, there are costs involved in keeping bees. You have to buy or build a hive. You have to buy or sew a protective bee suit. You have to have buckets and a machete and other tools. So for the student in the class, the widows and orphans, it was a bit daunting. But there was a lot of discussion on how to make cheaper alternatives for hives and bee suits. At the end of it, each student felt that beekeeping was feasible. There were ways to make it work. They wrote out brief business plans, too, planning how to grow their business over the first couple years.
After the three weeks of class we printed out certificates of completion for all the students and presented them. The Vice President of CECU was there for the “ceremony” and he prayed over the students as well. It happened to be John and Deb’s final day in the Congo so there were some tears and a lot of thanksgiving too.

Marta receiving her certificate

The graduates, certificates in hand

While John was teaching about bees he was also giving some training at the CECU garage on tractor maintenance and driving three afternoons a week. He taught them how to plow, helped initiate the building of a cassava planter and worked at getting their implements ready for another season of use. CECU was given 2 tractors from the Congo government to help kick-start economic growth in the region (other organizations received tractors too). However, the tractors were given with very little instruction on how to use them. Edison, the chief mechanic at the garage, said that what he has learned from John has given him confidence in using the tractors and in coming up with ways to get even more out of them.

John with the CECU Garage mechanics

Edison with the cassava planter

Tractor Driving Class

Making repairs

Deb, meanwhile, was working with the sewing instructors here at ELIKYA to design and put together bee suits from locally available material. She made several pairs of gloves, a jacket and several veils made out of screening. More importantly, the designs and the know-how to make more remain at ELIKYA and will be a vital part of the beekeeping program here.

Deb and Yiko working on the veil

The finished product

Another highlight of the Bruihler’s time at ELIKYA was the visit of the President of the ECC. The ECC is the largest Protestant organization in the Congo. It is made up of many different denominations including CECU. So it’s a pretty big deal when he comes to town. While he was visiting here in Gemena, he and his entire entourage came out to see what ELIKYA was all about. John shared a little about what he was doing here for the month and it really resonated with the President who was convinced that hope for development in the Congo lies in the rural areas with agriculture. They walked, hand in hand, out to see the plowing that had been done earlier in the day. The President seemed very pleased with the projects that were being undertaken, asking John when he was coming back.

John with the ECC President at ELIKYA

So now the Bruihlers are gone but work is still left to do. We have the challenge of building another beehive, of making more smokers, of looking into less expensive hive alternatives and of finishing the curriculum for future beekeeping classes. But we are happy to have this work and we hope to report on more bees at Elikya in the near future!